It’s a good ol’ fashioned case of he said/his electric carmaker said.
Yesterday, we all puzzled over the case of the California man who claimed his brand spankin’ new Tesla Model X went Maximum Overdrive and attempted to turn a store into a drive-thru.
In response to media scrutiny, Tesla Motors reviewed the vehicle’s electronic log (isn’t data collection great?), and now says the finger of blame points squarely at the driver, not at a vehicle malfunction.
In a statement sent to Elektrek, a Tesla spokesperson said:
“We analyzed the vehicle logs which confirm that this Model X was operating correctly under manual control and was never in Autopilot or cruise control at the time of the incident or in the minutes before. Data shows that the vehicle was traveling at 6 mph when the accelerator pedal was abruptly increased to 100%. Consistent with the driver’s actions, the vehicle applied torque and accelerated as instructed.”
The vehicle’s owner, Puzant Ozbag, claimed his five-day-old vehicle took off on its own while it was being parked. In response to Tesla’s statement, Ozbag revealed he wasn’t behind the wheel during the crash — his wife was driving at the time.
Despite Tesla’s claims, he’s not backing down from his view that an electronic glitch depressed the vehicle’s accelerator pedal, stating in a letter to Elektrek, “(My wife) knows the difference between brake and accelerator pedal.”
Well, if Tesla truly is sitting on a pile of electronic evidence sourced from his vehicle, it will be pretty easy for the automaker to avoid any blame in what now seems to be a human error-caused crash. Apparently, Tesla’s logs show the difference between human inputs and computer-actuated inputs, so suffice it to say there’s no beads of sweat forming on Elon Musk’s forehead.
No, that sweat is reserved for getting the Model 3 off the drawing board and into production in a timely manner.
[Images: Puzant/imgur]
Busted.
And I still think it’s stupid that the side curtain airbags deployed. It was unnecessary, makes repairs more expensive, and jacks up insurance rates.
that’s why other cars have a restraints control module (RCM) with accelerometers and other sensor inputs, in addition to the old-style impact sensors.
How do you know the max rollover angle the vehicle encountered before it stopped? If the angle was high enough the bags would have deployed due to the likelyhood of a rollover.
I’d expect it to be one heck of an angle, if it was just starting to tip the bags would be deflated by the time the car actually tipped over.
They deploy because the only way to get a good rating from NHTSA is to deploy all the bags.
Woman driver.
Hey, somebody had to say it!
Thank you.
A little Googling produces this interesting information:
Puzant Ozbag is president of a company called Pricon.
Pricon has qualified as an HP ServiceOne Expert partner, the highest level of HP service partnership.
Mr. Ozbag is not an idiot. Just a few minutes of research convinces me he is not a man to be taken lightly.
Puzant Ozbag, President
Pricon Enterprise Technologies
1831 West Lincoln Avenue
Anaheim, CA 92801
The company is called Pricant, not Pricon, and is it against your school of bottled zen to not read others’ posts before adding yours?
You are in error, sir.
You are correct and I’ll have my crow with a salad, please.
No wonder I couldn’t find more searching “Pricant/Ozbag”.
“Lifebuoy has a nice Pricant aftertaste.”
He may be smart, but he’s gullible and his wife is a liar.
If he’s really that smart, he would know better. Brakes override the throttle, car computers tell all, cameras are everywhere, plus witnesses. So he’s an idiot in this respect or he was protecting his drunk/medicated wife.
Police were there in a flash, this is Irvine, so by screaming, “Sudden Unexpected *TESLA* Acceleration!!!”, it threw the cops off, just enough.
You would hope brakes override the throttle. The Tesla X apparently has some kind of hybrid brake by wire system.
If the computer is failing, or some other component, they might not work.
I tend to agree that the likely cause is driver error but I’m stopping way short of being 100% sure. Too many unknowns about this vehicle and there are people in teslamotorclub.com forums claiming they’ve had brake failures on the Model X. What kind of problems they’re not very specific about.
I still have to wonder if the whole system could fail, accelerate the car, fail the brakes and log that the accelerator pedal was maxed. In most wrong pedal accidents the accelerator was not pegged to the floor.
While it may develop that Mr. Ozbag’s wife is mistaken or lying, I just can’t brand her that way just yet.
Late edit: One more thing about Pricon. Pricon just introduced a smart phone app to troubleshoot and summon services for HP products. Apparently his company is chocked full of tech experts. So it will be very interesting to see what kind of technical counterpunch he serves up in his wife’s defense.
Brake failures are ‘one thing’. They’re rare, but any car can have those, except it’s the combination of the throttle going ‘wide open’ too, that stinks to High Heaven. You’ll notice he never claimed she stood on the brakes or even touched them. Where was her right foot then?
He did say it was a good thing the wheels were turned a bit, as “straight ahead” would’ve put it inside the nail salon. So she couldn’t steer either?? Clearly he/they didn’t think any of this through.
But usually ‘wrong pedal’ drivers *floor it*. Not necessarily at first, but as they get the opposite of a stopping sensation, the keep pushing on it harder and harder.
Look, it’s OK with me. You’ve made up your mind about this an it’s not going to be changed by me. But I haven’t made up my mind yet and your over-the-top Tesla cheerleading ain’t gonna get it done.
I’ve yet to see a report on this accident saying she was medicated or impaired in any way.
Until we know more about her, I don’t think we can draw the conclusion that she caused this accident. She might well have caused it but the rush by Tesla to slam the case closed kinda sets my BS detector off. As does the assertion that she was medicated or drunk.
Unless Tesla is involved in straight up fraud, by the data they pulled, there never was “a case”, only a “normal” accident.
I’m saying she wasn’t given a sobriety check, and that could be because Ozbag was talking so loudly about “Sudden Unexpected *TESLA* Acceleration”, the focus was taken away from “Driver Error”. Basically a “show” put on for the cops.
Meaning Ozbag knew it was driver error from the start, and or the wife confessed to him secretly, or in a foreign language, and he came up with this crazy story to save her hide, but regardless of what he knew or did, it took the focus off of “bad driving”, or a big mistake at the wheel.
Hell, I’m far from a Tesla “cheerleader”. I’ve hardly commented on any Tesla articles, if I bothered to stop and “click” at all.
@WhiskeyRiver – “but the rush by Tesla to slam the case closed kinda sets my BS detector off. ”
Actually, I’m glad Tesla responded so quickly. Dawdling would look bad to me, as if the data was ambiguous and needed massaging for public consumption.
Exactly! Same day service from Tesla?? Frick with Toyota it was like pulling teeth. They argued the Black Boxes were “experimental” with “unreliable data”. It took a court order for Toyota to comply. Only one Toyota engineer knew how to extract the data, with one of two “download tools” in existence. Or at least that’s how I remember it, but it sure wasn’t easy or quick, not by a damn sight.
Has Tesla released any data?
All I saw was a statement. Tesla says it’s not their fault and cites their data. Toyota made the same sort of claim without citing data. Tesla’s argument doesn’t sound appreciably different from Toyota to me. As the article states, it’s a he said / they said kinda argument.
I’m not sold on Tesla’s explanation. I’m open to the notion that it’s driver error, but I’m also open to the notion that it wasn’t.
Just because Tesla says something doesn’t make it true. We ought to be able to trust what an American President says but I remember the blue dress…
Brake pedals don’t make cars accelerate.
This isn’t tough.
It’s not Tesla’s job to “release the data”. They don’t even own it, Ozbag does. He started this sh!t, and now the ball’s in his court.
But he’s laying low for a reason, tail between his legs. He fired up the Tesla blog site/forum, but now noticeably absent.
My avatar is so (coincidentally) prescient… maybe I’ll change my screen name to “Puzant Osbag”.
There’s an HP video on YouTube with Ozbag appearing in it. He’s also the president of something called Pricant. Can’t find more about his company.
Second from bottom of the vids here, with Tracy Galloway of HP:
http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/HP_Always_On_Support
The only “pricant” stuff I see is related to World of Warcraft. The video says that Pricant is an HP channel partner, but that was four years ago, so it could have been sold or renamed.
Exactly all zero people are shocked by this news. Placing blame is easier than accepting responsibility.
It’s not a lie if you actually believe it.
It’s still not the truth, but it’s not a lie.
Airbags for Ozbag!
OZbag wasn’t even in the car. Why aren’t we getting the wife’s lies directly? Or did the gas pedal still feel like a “brake pedal” to her, after impact?
So aren’t they really saying the car went *full throttle* its own, while the brakes completely failed also??
His wife does not speak English, I’m betting.
The name sounds Turkish.
I think he’s Armenian, not Turkish. It’s best not to conflate those two.
System of a Down “Chop Suey”(about the Armenian genocide that began in 1915)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSvFpBOe8eY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
Not Armenian.
Almost all Armenian surnames end with “-ian”.
Ara Parseghian
Kirk Kerkorian
Tim Bedrosian
And, unfortunately for Armenians everywhere, Kim Kardashian.
When I googled “Puzant Ozbag” I saw “Puzant Ozbag Zorayan” which I thought was the same person, but I’m probably wrong.
You’re right, Armenian surnames generally end in -ian, but are sometimes spelled -yan.
In any case, “Puzant Ozbeg” and variants thereof don’t mean anything in Turkish AFAIK. However, it could be a Turkic language which implies Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, or other areas generally near the Black Sea and/or Caspian Sea.
In conclusion – he’s probably not Turkish or Armenian.
Why is it that people who always have ridiculous crashes and suspicious litigious-bordering stories like this in the US have names like Ozbag or Jameet?
OK. Before we damn the Ozbags forever, let’s keep in mind that Tesla is releasing a statement based on their review of the data that absolves them of any guilt in this situation. I get Occam’s Razor and all that, but there’s an obviously favorable outcome for Tesla and that’s exactly the conclusion they’re drawing.
Will they release the data logs for independent inspection?
“Will they release the data logs for independent inspection?”
If subpoenaed, I’m guessing yes. Otherwise there is no good reason to release private customer data just so the internet can say “The independent inspectors are all on the take!”, or all other manner of conspiracy theory/dubious armchair data analysis, etc.
Also, damming the Ozbags forever is only 2-3 days in internet time…unless of course, they themselves want to drag this out.
@ckb – “Also, damming the Ozbags forever is only 2-3 days in internet time…unless of course, they themselves want to drag this out.”
It might be more than forever. People could start saying “Oh no! I pulled an Ozbag!”
Tesla also faces a PR problem. It’s not enough to be right. The company needs to be gracious about it.
Frends’;
I have a cousin in My Country, who does not have a name like the OzBag man here (a vacuum cleaning name’s I think,ha!), but has a similar of tendency. Each time I see him at the Reunion Tour of our family gathered, he say “Oh Grango, you need a story from me!”
So then he tells me for a while of his newest adventure of court procedure, and I feel like I might be a Law/Order: SVU episode customer! He does a fall at the locale of Starbuk, or maybe of the PizzaHouse – and then write angry letter (via the Poste, not on email because usually he has one of the older of a Dell PC which has a “blue man screen” like Cookie Monster ha ha). Then a honest company HQ in the US like Starbunk has to reply via their Country branch office HQ’s here, and tell him what he wants to hear, or else he will suing!
Two year’s ago he did this as well within a crash of his estate car. I can remember the story from 2014 Reunion Family Time, when he slide off road (ICE, ok) in his lite blue Skoda Favorit. His faulted, of course. But he send letter notice to the current owner of Skoda, who is of course Volks-wagen-VAG. I hear you say “Grango you can’t be so sure ownership without checking fact!” Well I did, via Wikipedia to find The Truth About It – haah.
And you know what happened at the time of the company did receive of the letter? Only about two weekend or so later, he get a very shiny envelope in the mails. He was excited to open after a long shift over in poultry establishment.
At the top, big white letters’
“YOURE NEW VOLSKWAGEN AWAITING, VISIT DEALER IN CENTRE CITY.”
My cousin did not apply to visiting for a new VW-Skoda, and did not have the reply for the taking of a Court House procedure… so luckily for Grango, that story was over before it was too long. My rakija was still cold to enjoy.
See you, be more careful than a OzBag’s is.
-Grango Relago
Please publish an anthology.
Elderly Camry owners better step up their game. Tesla is a real threat to their frontage window dominance.
What if the device that reads the input from the accelerator pedal is defective? It could have shorted and gone to 100% and the data recorder would have recorded it as a human input. Tesla’s data only shows that it was not from an automatic drive mode. That doesn’t mean that something didn’t malfunction or fail.
But according to them, the woman was firmly applying the brake pedal. Or did that short out too? Also, if it was a “short”, acceleration would have gone from 0% to 100% with no transition in-between. The computer at that point would understand that something is wrong and not accelerate.
I agree that their data is only going to show that there was an input that indicated the driver was commanding 100% throttle. To the best of my knowledge there isn’t a camera pointed at the pedals showing that is was, or was not depressed.
However since the throttle input is mission critical as well as a critical safety feature the typical electronic throttle has a “two track” sensor. The programing in the computer should be set up so that both inputs must agree within a narrow range. The other thing is that the two outputs are normally reversed so that a short to power or ground doesn’t create a false reading. So the output from track A would range from 1.0v = 0% throttle and 5.0v = 100% throttle and track B 5.0v = 0% throttle and 1.0v = 100% throttle.
If it is programmed right the computer should first check the rationality of the two readings and if that combination is irrational disregard both inputs and keep the power output at 0.
Redundancy rules out signal error, but is the pedal motorized to floor itself?
I highly doubt that it is a sensor not an actuator. Back in the days of mechanical linkages on throttles and cruise control it could seem like the cruise was depressing the pedal when in fact it was just holding the throttle open and thus preventing the throttle return spring from holding the pedal up.
With modern electronic throttle systems the pedal stays in its “0” state when the computer is using the cruise control logic to determine desired throttle opening.
Possibly Tesla sourced the actuators from the same company that made the pedals for Rose Mary Woods’ dictaphones?
Has Big Data (or Tesla itself) become such a religion that we cease all critical thinking in its presence?
“Data” coming from the accelerator pedal does not prove human error. All it proves is that data came from the accelerator pedal.
And then there’s the possibility of Tesla hiding something. The snark would be six feet thick if it was a diesel Passat perched on that grassy knoll, but because it’s a Tesla the thought doesn’t even occur to most commentators.
Yeah, anything’s possible, except we can reason. Humans are born to error, then lie about the whole thing. Computers, not nearly as much.
We can reason, but not if we accept the first response as the final one.
Look, I’m equally suspicious that it was driver error. I just saw some potential holes in the corporate press release, and was hoping for more debate from the B&B. I am not disappointed :)
Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions, based on what’s known about cars/software/ physics/humans, but what’s “some potential holes in the corporate press releases”?
My take on it is, the press release was trying to keep is as simple, straight forward, as possible, without directly throwing the driver under the “driver error”, “stinkin’ liar”, bus.
Yeah, OK, we weren’t in the car either, and yes, maybe OJ didn’t do it.
It’s safe to assume that unintended acceleration is caused by driver error. Depressing the brake pedal does not cause a car to accelerate.
Poor pedal placement can be a contributing factor, but
every automaker deserves the benefit of the doubt for claims such as these.
Actually, the data does prove human error. The data shows the accelerator pedal was fully depressed, and that the brake pedal was not.
Did you see the data, or are you basing your conclusion on the statement released by a Tesla spokesperson (or a re-write of said statement published somewhere online)?
No it does not prove human error but it shows that it is the most likely scenario. Fact is that it shows that the computer did not think it was receiving a brake input and that it believed it was receiving a 100% throttle input. Yes the likelihood of a malfunction that would have the inputs from both brake and throttle fail in such a manner is very low, but it still could be a possibility however small that it is.
Conspiracy theories are entertaining, but always exist on shaky ground.
Electronic throttles always require feedback to verify the input. For example, in an ICE the gas pedal sends a signal to the stepper motor in the throttle, whose throttle position sensor confirms the input and movement of the throttle.
With the EV or ICE, no application of the brake pedal would also serve as confirmation that only the throttle was being applied.
Don you may have a point, generally speaking, and the only way to really know is for an independent authority to look at the car itself, the stored data, and the code.
I speak for myself here, but it’s not blind trust on Tesla. It is only sensible to assume that they will have thoroughly thought through all the possibilities in this and tested them exhaustively. Anytime you have some control system that deals with power, motion, braking and handling, those are safety critical systems and A TON of people come into the room and stay there until the engineers are exhausted.
It is possible that they got something seriously wrong, being in a rush to get this out the door and what not, but it would be a catastrophic risk to the company.
Toyota’s software engineering practices notwithstanding it seems highly unlikely they’d cut corners on something like that. Obviously this has happened before.
It’s a near certainty that Tesla will break out a team to look into the allegation further and try to find a way to create this problem, and maybe even upload newer code to extract more live data from their cars out in the wild. Perhaps they may decide to write extra code to detect a driver confusing the gas and brake pedals.
@ahintofpepperjack – it’s not that simple.
No in and ICE powered vehicle the electronic throttle pedal does not send a signal to the throttle motor. It sends a signal (actually a couple of signals) to the computer the computer then decides if that input is rational and what course of action it should take if it indeed checks out as rational. If it does determine it has a rational input that indicates that their is a desire to open the throttle it will then send that signal to the throttle motor (which is not a stepper motor) and uses the throttle position sensor to determine if and when the throttle is in the desired position.
@SCE – By “conspiracy theory” I hope you didn’t mean to imply that I’m a crackpot for raising the question of Tesla’s integrity. That would be dangerously close to illustrating my point about religion.
People are questioning the integrity of the driver and his wife, and nobody’s calling that a conspiracy theory. And then there’s the whole VW thing after all. If a conservative company like VW can systematically lie to the public, then surely a showman like Elon Musk is capable of a little fib as far as we know.
@don1967 – “And then there’s the whole VW thing after all… ”
VW had something to gain by fudging the emissions code. And the emissions test was a known quantity in a controlled environment.
SUA is neither known nor predictable, making it hard to fudge logs in a completely deceptive way. But why even consider falsifying logs? The data is useful.
But I hear you. We need additional supporting evidence. I’m sure auditors and insurance companies are getting involved as a matter of procedure.
I wonder if the owner is claiming that the brake pedal was pressed. If so, then we look at whether the data shows that the accelerator pedal was pressed, and the brake pedal wasn’t, then it breaks the owner’s story.
The probability of two physically independent sensors failing at the same time, for the same duration, is fairly close to zero.
Another possibility is that the wife was trying to adjust something while parked, and accidentally stepped on the pedal.
From what we’ve heard so far, looks like we have another mild case of affluenza here.
It’s even less likely, since both the brake pedal and the accelerator pedals will have at least two redundant sensors. All of them would have to fail. Their readings are also different so they would have to fail where the accelerator pedal’so sensors are both sending their very different readings for full throttle, while Mrs. Ozbag’so brake pedal sensor would have to fail with both readings being a faulty 0% brake pressure.
Look, the guy is just taking what his wife told him and he’s trying to make it stick. “But I was the brake pedal pressing, Puzant.”
He knows that if he counters with, “I think you hit the gas, honey”, he might as well pack up all his belongings, leave the house, and move to Blue Balls City. If we assume he is a smart guy, which he seems to be, he would know that no engine can overpower a fully applied brake.
So he’s keeping the home fires burning by floating this car-drove-itself sham.
I agree. He seems to have just been dropped into a hard place by domestic reality. I’m equally convinced that his wife is 100% lie-detector earnest in believing she stomped on the brake and not the accelerator.
What are ya gonna do?
The car didn’t go all HAL 9000 on her.
It was a new car. She was not familiar with it yet. I’m sure she believes with all her heart she pressed the brake pedal. She is wrong. She screwed the pooch.
Telematics in the car don’t have a reason to lie or an axe to grind. She was in error. Call the insurance company, and publicly apologize to Tesla for slandering and possible libeling the company.
Puzant didn’t want to be a Pricon, so he bent his Ozback backwards (and as a result crashed into a wall).
Have mercy, people! The guy is suffering already without the Tesla in his life.
Would bet money on two-footed driving while wearing inappropriate shoes.
you must hate your money then ;)
There is logic in most cars with electronic inputs that will detect this sort of thing and take the safest possible course of action and taking into account the rest of the data from the vehicle’s myriad sensors.
And full disclaimer: i drive autos with both feet and switch between stick and auto regularly. It is mostly for enthusiasts or those who pay attention. Most Tesla drivers wouldn’t be into that sort of technique. with autonomous features, the advantages of it have gone out the window really.
Dorothy looked down sadly, and said, “I guess that there’s nothing in that Ozbag for me…”
“Despite Tesla’s claims, he’s not backing down from his view that an electronic glitch depressed the vehicle’s accelerator pedal, stating in a letter to Elektrek, “(My wife) knows the difference between brake and accelerator pedal.””
So does everybody else…yet somehow accidental accelerator push seems to happen, and often from the news reports.
So…Tesla is supplying the evidence to show that THEIR product doesn’t malfunction. it sounds just like the Queensland (Australia) police investigating a death caused by one of their own..”we see no evidence of murder…” or the catholic church listening to complaints of child abuse… ” not here…” .Why don’t they simply admit defeat,rectify the toyota problem and move on or is musks cash flow to tight? (a little musky perhaps.)
If you think about what would happen if Tesla did actually find that the car accelerated by itself then yeah, you would think conspiracy theory.
But what does common sense tell you knowing what you know about Toyota and Audi in decades past.
The driver mistook power for brake. The end.
I know that Audis and Toyotas that were accused in the past didn’t offer autonomous operation. Was the self-parking Lexus LS460 ever accused of unintended acceleration?
Does the Tesla have hydraulic brakes? If so, then pressing the brake (not the pedal to the right of it that you thought was the brake) will stop the car, no matter what may happen with the accelerator. Laws of physics, folks.
If you press on a pedal and the car speeds up, which pedal do you think is being pressed??? Hmmmmm?
If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras, and definitely not five-legged, hoofed, chartreuse colored squirrels.
@turf3 – “If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, …”
Unless they were Monty Python coconuts.